This Is Happening is looking back on a life well lived and well learned, the final cap on a perfect career.

Their call-and-response breakdowns are still as impassioned as ever on tracks like Drippy and Cruise Control, where they place the hooks and melodies right on the surface. The use of ambiance over their riotous songs isn’t just an asset, it’s also the essence of No Age.

Weaving in dustier threads to Beach House’s ever shimmery fabric proves that the cyborgian approach of mixing the organic with the mechanical is an increasingly winning formula.

All in all, A Celebration of Endings is a curious, often potent blend of sounds and influences. While lyrically dark, its exploration is more often than not a very satisfying ride into the unknown.

Being interesting, unique, fun and damn good is near impossible to pull off. Sleigh Bells has done it on Treats, and goddamn is it good.

This is The National’s 4th or 5th comfortably strong album in a row, another slight variation on a tried-and-true theme.

The resonance of Let Them Eat Chaos is mammoth, and Tempest’s lexical flair is the difference maker.

Sleep Cycle represents, and unintentionally so, a creative rebirth that goes against Animal Collective’s increasingly evanescent creativity. It took long enough, but the investment was worth it.

The eleven robust tracks on Entrench are memorable not simply because of their animalistic intensity, but because they’ve taken that energy and fine-tuned it into some expertly crafted songs.

The album packs a lot of ideas—and songs—into its brief 33-minute runtime, preventing almost any song from overstaying its welcome. ... The result is some of their loosest, most fun work.

There's such an embarrassment of riches in Lost and Safe.

There’s nothing new here, but it’s a strange feeling of someone else repeating back what you’ve probably been thinking. Tempest acknowledges she’s not saying anything revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth saying.

Make no mistake: it may be a good two decades late, but ONoffON is the follow-up that Vs. has always cried out for. And as a result, it’s one of the finest records I’ve heard all year.

Fall Be Kind shows the band on the path to becoming an even mellower band and nothing here is exceptionally energetic except for the last half of Graze.

She follows her curiosity with abandon, deconstructing pop modalities with space and patience—from the strings-drenched chamber jazz (For the Old World) and the warped avant-garde of the title track to campfire folk (Spirit in the Eye of the Fire King,") her wildly eclectic, though sometimes distancing, choices sound familiar, yet completely their own.

For music that's this visceral, every heart-rending confession can feel like a victory lap—but even the best runners have to take a breather to renew their energy.

The great achievement of Feels is that it throws everything at every track yet never loses sight of the tunes themselves.

In Western Stars, the old adage about finding meaning through the journey couldn't feel truer. And that's an idea that Springsteen can relate to—leaving a little bit of yourself in a landscape that feels immortal.

It’s a dense, difficult listen, nigh impossible to compare to the rest of Kanye West’s work, and its rewards come slowly.

Wildheart impresses in parts, and Miguel’s vocals are a thing to behold. For the most part, however, it’s a record that struggles to fully hold your attention.

Even with the songwriting differences, Hope Downs sounds like a unified partnership between five musicians who've known each other for most of their lives.

In many ways, his music is more punk than punk music is nowadays-stripped down completely to only the most basic and bare of instruments, the tiny Kristian Matsson manages to live up to his name as The Tallest Man on Earth.

Whereas Pratt once settled on a colder and more reserved state, Quiet Signs manages to present a more empathetic side of her that was once concealed. It's still quaint by comparison, though, a delicately-crafted acoustic set that offers insight into her deepest fears and truths without letting us encroach into her private space.

One of the best debuts of the year.

Certainly, it feels as though Takk emerges from a group who, despite arriving at the zenith of their capability, has, at least for the time being, run out of things to say.

MCII sounds much more concise and meticulously assembled than any of Segall's efforts.

That's quite a timespan, though, and it does mean that one minute you're reeling from the hormonal stench of a roomful of anguished shoegazers and the next you're surrounded by happy little Japanese girls wearing anti-gravity shoes and doing Steiner dancing with wafty pastel banners. But that's just as it should be.

Great art must provoke or inspire you, and I’m sorry to all the folks out there “awash” in Eluvium’s dreamy “soundscapes” of pure “emotion” and “beauty”, but this record does neither.